


What Loving Him Did to Me

by DemonBanisher



Series: Escaping His Shadow [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Muggle, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Past Abuse, Past Relationship(s), Recovery, Sirius Black is a Good Boyfriend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:15:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27651892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DemonBanisher/pseuds/DemonBanisher
Summary: Remus Lupin and Fenrir Greyback were friends once, they were in love once. But years later, Fenrir is still in Remus' life through random spontaneous text messages that send him hurdling back to the emotional and psychological abuse he endured. He hopes this time will be different, but either way he has Sirius by his side to help him through.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Series: Escaping His Shadow [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2024663
Comments: 2
Kudos: 41





	What Loving Him Did to Me

**Author's Note:**

> So, my ex texted me today, and yep it's been a complicated emotional roller coaster. This was a cathartic fic I wrote to try and help me process those emotions. Thought I'd share in case other's have a similar experience.
> 
> CW/TW: exploration of emotional and psychological abuse, mentions of past self harm, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts

Remus’ fingers fly across the keyboard as he works away on the essay for one of his many English courses. This one isn’t due for another few weeks but when an idea hits him, it’s almost like a virus, it takes over and it just has to come out of him in some way or another. He switches tabs and scans his research articles again. Moral solipsism. He knows that term, but the meaning of it dances just away from the realm of remembrance in his brain. Not wanting to mess up his layout on his laptop, he reaches absentmindedly for his phone. And that’s when he sees it. 

Four text messages. At first, he thinks nothing of the familiar green notifications. Probably his mom checking in on him, or Sirius wanting to know when he’s free later, or James wanting to know if he’s going to the match. But it’s none of them. And just like that his chest is constricting again. Whatever brilliant argument he’d dreamt up in his mind is flying away from him and his hands that moments ago had flown steadily over the keyboard now tremble. 

The texts are from Fenrir. His ex or that’s what he tells people because it’s less complicated than whatever they were. They could simply say Hey or be a butt dial but it’s that name, lighting up Remus’ screen that undoes everything inside of him that was perfectly composed moments ago.

This happens about every six months. Has been happening every six months for the last three years. It’s something Remus should be used to by now. Something that shouldn’t rattle him as much as it does. 

Panic building Remus opens up his messages on his laptop, not yet wanting to see what Fenrir has sent him and texts Sirius. 

\- Can you come over?  
\- Fenrir texted and I’m having a panic attack.

As Remus waits for the response, he sits unseeing and tries to focus on counting every breathe in and out, slowing down his world until it’s just the feeling of air filling his lungs. So he doesn’t have to remember, because he doesn’t want to remember.

Sirius replies.

\- Be there in ten.

They have to be the ten longest minutes of Remus’ life and somehow in that time his mom decides to call him, even though she rarely does without messaging first. She can tell something is off in his voice and asks him. Maybe it’s the panic or the crazy mania that is starting to set in the wake of it, but he does. 

“Fenrir texted me again.”

Silence on the other end of the line. And then the words that Remus has heard over and over again. The words that he knows to be true in a rational part of his brain but that he could never bring himself to do. 

“You know you can block him, right dear?”

Remus sighs and buries his head in his hands. “It’s complicated Ma.”

“Complicated how?”

He chews on his lip. Remembering how he’s tried to make her understand, but she never could. She wasn’t there. This didn’t happen to her. She doesn’t know what this war inside of him is like. 

“Let’s not get into it now Ma.”

“Okay,” Hope says and politely switches the subject.

Remus chats along with her but isn’t sure he actually comprehends anything that she has said. And then the phone call is over, and Sirius still isn’t here. 

Remus stares at the phone on his desk like it is going to suddenly sprout snakes and becomes so focused on it he jumps when he hears a knock at his door before it creeps open.

“You in here Moons? Marlene let me in.”

“Yeah,” Remus says, almost shocked that his voice isn’t shaking. “Sorry, I didn’t hear you come on.”

“No worries.” Sirius says and grabs the extra chair Remus has stashed in the corner for impromptu study sessions and drags it over to sit by him.

Remus laughs and Sirius is startled by the unexpected sound.

“You know,” he says. “I was having such a bloody good morning. Hell, I’ve been having such a bloody good month. I didn’t need this shit.”

“I know.” Sirius says. 

“You ready for this?” Remus says as he picks up his phone.

“Yeah. Have you read them yet?”

“Nope. Didn’t stop me for having a bloody fucking panic attack now did it? God, just his name on the screen was enough to send me spiralling.” He laughs again, has enough time to think to himself that he has descended into some other realm of insanity. That this is the straw that has finally broken him, and he isn’t coming back.

“Moony?” Sirius asks, dragging him back into reality.

“Right, sorry.” Remus says and opens it. “I’ve been thinking about you lately. You’re always on my mind when things get bad again. I wonder if it’s like that for you too. The feeling of being dragged back through time to everything that we went through together. Back when you devoured my every thought. Maybe it’s like that for you but only when I reach out. Maybe I’ve made it all worse by saying something. I’m sorry, I can be selfish like that sometimes.”

Sirius breathes in deeply through his teeth. Not surprised necessarily, he’s been through this all with Remus before, but always a little shocked at how good Fenrir is at manipulation. The way that he knows how to twist the knife in just so.

“Devoured my every thought.” Remus echoes, remembering that obsessive behaviour. Remembering how controlling Fenrir was, how he didn’t want anyone around him, how he was, and maybe still is, convinced that there was some strong unbreakable bond between the two of them. 

“Are you going to reply?” Sirius asks.

“Should I? No. Will I? Probably.” 

“Moons, and before I say this I want you to know that I will never know exactly what you’re feeling right now, but you do know you can block him right? It’s okay for you to block him. You don’t owe him anything.”

But he does, doesn’t he? Fenrir was the first one to not run away from Remus’ scars, to actually understand his self-harm. Instead of telling him to knock it off or ignoring it he would work with Remus to figure out how to keep them under wraps while they were healing. Remus doesn’t know where he would be if he didn’t have him there. They were friends before everything went to shit and they stayed friends while it was all going to shit. Somewhere in there they had both loved each other. Remus was pretty sure they technically dated for a while, but he couldn’t tell when it had started or ended. Either way, before Sirius, before James, before Lily, and all his wonderful roommates now, Fenrir was the only person who had ever seen him. 

“You don’t understand.” Remus says. “No one will ever understand.”

Because it had been a relationship on a tightrope wire. As Remus’ worked to get his self-harm under control and battle his own suicidal thoughts, Fenrir got worse. Two years clean, he fell back into his own self-destructive habits. He was in and out of hospitals a lot. Remus tries not to think about how hollow the weeks of not knowing if he was alive or dead were. Tries not to think of the phone calls and texts that he’d missed or the way that he used to wake up in the middle of the night, suddenly unable to breathe and scrambling for his phone certain that something had happened. Even in the two years after Remus walked away and before the bi-annual spontaneous texts, Remus would wake up in the dead of night to check his phone. It was the reason he hated phone calls, the way his heart would constrict, and he’d feel like he couldn’t breathe, especially if it was an unknown caller.

“Let me try.” Sirius says.

“There were phone calls I missed Sirius, texts I should have answer. Those will haunt me until I die. If I blocked him and something happened…”

Sirius takes Remus’ hands in his gently.

“Rems, you know if something did happen, not saying that it will, but if, you know that it wouldn’t be you fault, right?”

People have been telling him it wasn’t his fault for years, but he still doesn’t believe it. Still doesn’t know if he ever will. Because he should have seen and answered those phone calls, right? His job was to be there, to protect him, and he failed. 

“I know.” Remus says, but Sirius can tell from the tone of his voice that he doesn’t believe it. 

“Remus, you were a kid when all of this happened. Barely even a teenager, you can’t carry all that responsibility on yourself. You can’t think that it was your job to rescue him. That doesn’t even take into account what he did to you. How he treated you.”

Nothing but a distraction. That was what Fenrir had called him. Told him he needed to cut out distractions from his life. Video games. Booze. Remus. Then there was that time that Fenrir asked him what his dream was and over the course of sixteen gruelling text messages told him step by step how it would fail. He thinks that Fenrir meant it as some weird analogy for their relationship, but still, Remus is terrified that he is right. Can’t forget how empty he had felt. Already gutted by the constant beratement he hadn’t even been able to bring himself to cry. Fenrir had dug him out from the inside. Turned him into a hollow person and he was doing it all over again. 

“Are you still scared of him?” Sirius asks

Always. Why else would simply seeing someone’s name set off a panic attack? Remus remembers the way he talked about showing up at his house. The fantasies he had dreamt up where Remus’ family had been kidnapped and how he’d save them all. They way he’d thrown Remus’ friend into a locker when he’d thought he had a crush on him. How when Remus had ended up spending most of their graduation talking with Caradoc, Fenrir had found him afterwards and told him “what goes around comes around.” Like a threat, it had hung heavy in the air. He had never hit Remus. Never even explicitly threatened to do so. But it had felt that there was always this understanding that he could have. Even now, when Remus visits home he finds himself scanning stores for anyone who looks even remotely like Fenrir. Protecting and preparing himself for even the most mundane of run-ins. 

“I think I’ll always be, Pads. I can’t forget seeing him throw my friend into a locker or the way that he talked about showing up at my house.” Remus tries not to think about the fact that he still knows where his parents live and tries instead to focus on the fact that, so far, he never has dropped by unannounced. All these years he could have shown up and he didn’t, but that didn’t stop Remus from being afraid. 

“I’ll never blame you for not shutting him out of your life. I blame him for the way that he makes you feel. For the way that he made you think you were worthless. For the fears that he put in you about being unlovable.” Sirius knows these fears well, he had to fight upstream through them all at the start of Remus and his relationship. “Whether or not you choose to answer that message, I’ll still be here.”

“Do you think if I told my landlord that I punched a hole in the wall because my abusive ex texted me he wouldn’t charge me for it?”

Sirius laughs, even though he knows Remus is deflecting his pain with humour, and Remus realizes that he is still in manic fight or flight mode. He knows in a few hours he’ll sink into a deep depression. He isn’t looking forward to it at all. He hates that Fenrir still has power over him, even from hundreds of miles away, it feels to Remus that in some way he has let him win.

“Unfortunately, I don’t think they’ll let you off the hook for that.”

“Shame.” Remus says, he really feels like driving his head through drywall right now or dropping a basket full of teacups down the stairs or smashing his laptop with his fists. He wants to destroy something, maybe so he can stop thinking about the way that Fenrir destroyed him. 

“What can I do?” Sirius asks. 

“Stay?” Remus says pleading, he can’t bear to be alone right now. 

So, Sirius stays, he stays when Remus decides to text Fenrir back just to make sure he is okay, he stays when Fenrir replies saying he’s willing to talk through all that has happened between them, but he understands if Remus needed another break from him. Sirius notes the way that a permanent break never seems to be an option. He stays when Remus hates himself for feeling so empty that he can’t cry. He stays and cooks when it gets late and Remus hasn’t noticed that he hasn’t eaten all day. He stays when Remus tells Fenrir that he needs to think on it. And he stays when Remus lies awake all night, tossing and turning as the memories of their abusive relationship haunt him. He curls his arms around Remus and holds on tight. He bends down and plants a gentle kiss on his forehead.

“You know Fenrir didn’t break you right?”

“Right.” Remus says, tugging at the blankets around him, feeling suffocated again.

“No Remus,” Sirius says pulling on his shoulder so that he turns to look at him. “Fenrir didn’t break you. You’re not broken.”

“Then why can’t I fucking cry Sirius? This shit is so fucked up but it’s been going on for so long that all I feel in empty now. I should be able to feel something, he took that from me.”

“He didn’t Remus. No matter what he did, no matter what he does, he can never take away how special you are. No matter how awful he was to you. No matter how dark it got, you still wanted to keep him safe. Your first thought was never for yourself, but always for someone else.”

“You know,” Remus says. His voice barely a whisper. “I never understood why people in abusive relationships stayed… and then I did. Over. And over. And over again.”

“You loved him Rems, there’s no crime in that.”

But there was, wasn’t there? Loving Fenrir had killed Remus. Split him into two. The person he was before Fenrir and the person after. He was forever changed because of what he had been through. He could never truly escape the memory of Fenrir and what had been done because it had shaped him into who he was today. Even if he hates it, even if he doesn’t want to admit it, Remus understands that the reason he’s vocal about so many issues is because he has seen what they did to Fenrir, he had seen what they did to him.

“You aren’t broken Moony.” Sirius says again and kisses him on the forehead.

Remus lies still. Hoping for a single tear. Anything. 

Sirius holds him closer, tries to hold him steady as he tosses and turns through the night. Checking to make sure he’s okay when he startles awake to check his phone again. And in the morning, as Remus sits at the breakfast table rereading the text for the millionth time, Sirius tells him again.

“It’s not your fault, Remus. You did all you could do and whatever he did to you… It didn’t break you.”

Remus doesn’t believe him, but Sirius hopes that if he says it enough, that maybe one day he will.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments and kudos are always welcome! Remember no matter what your experience, your feelings are valid, and you deserve to be loved well, whether romantically, platonically, or otherwise!


End file.
